John Bacon Curtis from Hampden, Maine, USA, produced the first commercially available chewing gum, calling it ‘The State of Maine Pure Spruce Gum’.
Chewing gum has been enjoyed in Central and North America for thousands of years. The Mayans and Aztecs used chicle, a natural tree gum, and the Native Americans chewed on a resin made from the sap of spruce trees. As a farm hand, young Curtis probably observed Native Americans producing and chewing their gum.
With the help of his father, twenty-one-year-old Curtis began boiling spruce tree resin on the kitchen stove. When satisfied, he cut the gum into strips, wrapped it with his own label, and tried to sell it in stores. No one was interested, so he took to the road, becoming a peddler and travelling through New England, selling his gum and making a profit.
While Curtis peddled his gum, his father continued to manufacture the gum at home, making larger and larger quantities. ‘Pickers’, who were farmers, lumbermen, and even women, collected and sold their resin to the Curtis family for extra income. It was a hard job. The pickers scored or wounded the tree, the sap bubbled up to heal the wound, and months later the pickers would return to slice the hardened sap off the tree.
In 1852, the Curtis & Son Company, producing chewing gum, opened in Portland, Maine, employing 200 workers and producing 1800 boxes of gum a day. In 1869 the Curtis senior died. Although his chewing gum business continued, John Bacon lost interest in it and ventured into other businesses – dredging, ship-building, mining and farming. He died in 1897 at the age of 70, a very rich man.
In 1892, a young salesman selling baking powder decided to offer a free packet of spruce gum with his baking powder. The gum was so successful that William Wrigley started his own chewing gum business and his company continues to be the leading gum manufacturer to this day.
Worldwide chewing gum sales in 2023 are around $16 billion. There is even a National Chewing Gum Day in the United States on September 30th. But the age-old question remains: ‘Does your chewing gum lose its flavour on the bedpost overnight?